Very cool Darien, sounds like a fantastic start! I'd like to help in some way if you're interested. Unit tests, sample application, etc. Are there any data model classes that you need? I have some code for Contacts/Extension/GroupMembershipInfo.php and Deleted.php if you are interested.

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-06-04T16:12:02.000+0000

Thanks, I'm currently waiting on The Powers That Be to authorize me sending CLA application. Once I can post actual code things should be clearer.

I'm afraid my development model has been fairly haphazard, partially because this is my first time delving into the Gdata component works internally. So I don't have any unit tests. (How do you unit test against a monolithic external service anyway?) Right now the general structure is similar to the Calendar/ListEntry.php class.

Stuff I don't plan to implement any time soon:
* Photos
* Bulk updates (a broader issue than just Contacts)
* Group or Membership data and queries

Misc concerns:
* The existing extendedProperty handler (Zend_Gdata_Extension_ExtendedProperty) only appears to support attribute-based data storage. By contrast, this documentation page suggests it needs to have a switch for XML-blobs: http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/…

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-06-04T16:18:56.000+0000

What the test contact looks like in GMail...

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-06-04T16:21:40.000+0000

...Shows a GMail contact as retrieved and displayed by PHP code.

The [1] designates the primary e-mail. "

MyCat" is a custom category for information, parallel to "Work" and "Personal".

Phone numbers may have a subtype like "Fax".

For organizations, the title is in square brackets.

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-06-04T16:27:23.000+0000

Okay, so those last two screenshots are at least proof-of-concept. (Yes, the custom output is ugly, but it was easier when writing a bunch of throwaway echo statements.)

More musings and API uncertainties:
* Can you have multiple "Fax" or "Mobile" phone numbers for a single category for a single contact? Right now there's no clientside code for checking that kind of situation.
* It seems you can make a custom category called "work" that parallels the built-in "work" category. Is this a bug? How can we distinguish between them? The current implementation just assumes such name collision is not possible.
* I haven't tested any sort of "advanced searching" or listing--just pulling back a small but complete list of test contacts.

In answer to your three questions:
- yes, it is possible to have multiple phone numbers with rel set to fax (http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#fax)
- when you say that you are making a custom category, do you mean that you are adding an Atom category element to the entry, or did you mean you are using a different rel value on a phoneNumber element (for example)?
- the query capabilities for the API are listed here: http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/… . The items in the first box should already be included inf you inherit from the Gdata query class, the second set will require some new code. Please let me know if the descriptions in the documentation aren't clear.

If you have any questions, please ask :)

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-06-10T14:59:22.000+0000

Thanks for your reply. I'm still bugging the appropriate folks for official permission to contribute the code.

What I had meant about categories is what you can do with Gmail: You start with "Work", "Personal" and "Other".

You can make custom categories like "Secret Identity" to hold a similar corresponding set of postal/im/email/phone data.

However, it seems you can also make custom categories which (from just looking at the XML) are indistinguishable from the built-in ones.

Improvements:
* Added features to set the "primary" flag among sets of phone, IM, email, and postal values. (AFAIK the "primary e-mail" scope includes all email items in all categories, not just "Primary for Home" and "Primary For Work", etc.)
* Listing categories in use for an entry (Home, Work, Personal, Foo)
* Retrieving data objects by category label
* Contacts-API-specific query options mostly coded

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-06-30T15:44:26.000+0000

Huzzah! Apparently a confluence of deadlines (some ending, some starting) have resulted in activity.

I anticipate having legally-postable svn diffs shortly. Hopefully in time for the 1.6 feature freeze. Mind you, my prior "anticipation" was misleading, but literally correct :)

Is there any particular branch or tag I should diff against? I'm currently working off of 1.5.2, although it shouldn't matter very much since most of the files are new.

Posted by Ryan Boyd (rboyd) on 2008-06-30T16:13:52.000+0000

Hi Darien,

I appreciate all your hard work to get contacts support in. However, I don't know if we're going to have time to get this in before midnight tonight for the 1.6 feature freeze. I believe all code reviews/testing/docs/etc need to be complete by tonight. Given that ZF strives to maintain backwards compatibility, I don't think we really want to rush through this process.

Perhaps we should work on getting this checked into trunk later this week and then push forward to having it included in the 1.7 release (which Wil promises will come shortly after 1.6).

We can then post info in the Google Group for Contacts and get people to test it out before the release?

Cheers,
-Ryan

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-06-30T16:27:04.000+0000

Ah, so it's more than just a freeze on feature scope, then. Darn.

Regarding backwards-compatibility...

The only changes that are not entirely new files are convenience functions which can be moved elsewhere. I could submit a changeset which shouldn't affect anybody who isn't specifically trying the new API.

Posted by Ryan Boyd (rboyd) on 2008-06-30T16:44:59.000+0000

Hi Darien,

Yea, I'd love to get this in ASAP, but I want to make sure it's done right. The note from Wil:
"Just a reminder that the feature-complete (that means all code, unit tests, and documentation) deadline for all contributions targeted for the 1.6 release is 6/30. "

Re backwards-compat:
What I was referring to was that if we rush to get the contacts support added in the next couple hours, we could miss something in Contacts that we'd want to change, and end up regretting not being able to change it in the future :)

I'd love to get your code in.. I'm super excited that you're contributing it, but I just don't want to rush it the night of the freeze.

Can we work to get this reviewed this week, committed in trunk and then give the Google Group for contacts a chance to test it out before the 1.7 freeze?

Cheers,
-Ryan

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-06-30T16:56:01.000+0000

Sure, I have no particular objection to delaying it until 1.7, I just misunderstood the scope of the freeze.

On a unrelated note, I've been toying with is a Gdata adapter for Zend_Auth, but I'm running into some ambiguities since usernames are not necessarily unique due to context (service used, real gmail vs hosted corporate, etc.)

I'll focus on adding more skeleton examples while waiting for the corporate gears to grind.

Posted by Ryan Boyd (rboyd) on 2008-07-07T20:46:41.000+0000

Hi Darien,

Great - thanks for the proposal! We'll happily review it. As this is not a new component, but rather just some new classes for an existing component (Zend_Gdata), I don't believe it really needs a formalized proposal.

Good luck with the "corporate gears."

Cheers,
-Ryan

Posted by Curt Larson (emailcurt) on 2008-07-11T11:03:50.000+0000

Thanks for your great work on this Darien. I might need to get this implemented before Darien gets throught he legal gears, could anyone give me a hand on how to do this manually? I'd be fine if I could just extract the raw data from google, but not sure how to do it. Ideally actually I'd just like to get it in JSON.

Turns out the patch I posted is already broken (broken assertion) when it encounters rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#work_fax"

Posted by Darien Hager (hagerd) on 2008-08-27T19:33:24.000+0000

Due to unexpected developments I will not be able to proactively develop this feature at this time, so I'm changing it to unassigned. I will however try to keep watching the issue and helping as time permits.

Posted by Trevor Johns (tjohns) on 2008-08-27T21:49:15.000+0000

No worries Darren, I can help finish it up. Speaking of which, I'm hoping to finish going through the patch within the next week.

Posted by Trevor Johns (tjohns) on 2008-08-27T21:50:07.000+0000

Err, Darien. Sorry about that. :)

Posted by Trevor Johns (tjohns) on 2009-02-26T17:25:43.000+0000

Increasing priority to major.

Posted by Ian Service (iservice) on 2009-07-30T06:40:44.000+0000

Are there any updates on progress with this? As Google has added domain-wide contacts, this is of much more use to me now. The patch above seems to work to an extent but there is now version 3 of the Google Contacts API which has new, more structured types.

I'd be glad to work with someone to get this Gdata addition working correctly.

Posted by Trevor Johns (tjohns) on 2009-07-30T10:35:11.000+0000

Sorry, there hasn't been much work on this since my last update.

The core code exists, but I still need to sit down and write tests, sample code, and documentation. Especially tests.

Posted by Ian Service (iservice) on 2009-07-30T12:04:17.000+0000

Does it exist somewhere where I can use it as-is? It doesn't have to be perfect, I don't really need docs as I've been going through the API over the last few days pretty intensively.

Posted by Trevor Johns (tjohns) on 2009-07-30T15:41:37.000+0000

Nope. If it takes much longer, I might check it into the incubator, but for now there's no public copy.